Modern Art in the Arab World is a collection of approximately 125 primary documents dealing with the debates around modernism in the Arab world dating between 1882 to 1987. This essay responds to the book from two perspectives: first, as an academic researching modernism in Morocco, and second, as a Qatar-based professor that teaches undergraduate courses about modern and contemporary Arab art. The book highlights a broadly defined and heterogeneous Arab world that extends from Morocco to the Gulf, and the selected texts create new conversations between these varied movements. It is evidence of the changing nature of this field of study. As a tool for teaching, the book offers signposts about what the editors consider to be the most significant debates and events in a given place while also creating the possibility for reading these movements transnationally.

Pluralism is deployed to govern migration across the Global North and Global South in contradictory ways. Fearing the arrival of migrants on its own shores – a threat to its biopolitical constitution – Europe deploys discourses of pluralism in the Global South to encourage migrants en route to Europe to sedentarize in “transit” countries like Sudan. Neoliberal development projects propagate the virtues of pluralism to host communities in Sudan, who are exhorted to view migrants as potential economic assets. Yet, in the context of Europe those same migrants continue to be seen as an economic and racial threat. While a lack of skills and entrepreneurialism are framed as the “root cause” of migration to Europe, migrants are paradoxically presented as trainable and therefore economically productive in the Global South. This article offers a critical examination of consolidating migration management practices in Sudan, their imbrication with development projects, and the racial anxieties they evoke in both Europe and in “transit” countries. It homes in on not only populations headed towards Europe, but those intending to remain in Sudan, notably Syrians, and explores the lessons and aporias of Sudan's hitherto open-door policy towards the latter.

The term “social sciences” (‘ulūm-i-ijtimā’ī) has gained currency in Iran only during the last fifteen years or so, but some of the disciplines falling within its purview have been in existence for a longer period. Thus the first institution for teaching political science was established in 1899, and the first chair of sociology was created in 19 35 in the University of Tehran. Besides, iike Molière’s bourgeois gentillhomme who belatedly realized that he had been making prose all his life without being aware of it, some Iranian scholars too have long been engaged in writing, translating and conducting research on social problems or using sociological concepts without being conscious of themselves as social scientists.

Since from a chronological viewpoint, political science appeared in Iran prior to other disciplines of social sciences and its studies involve problems of a distinct nature, the present paper is divided into two parts: the first dealing with political science, and the second with sociology and related disciplines.

The current state of mapping for the Middle East has been conditioned by the particular needs of indigenous countries, by foreign national and private interests, by the demands of the Western public, and by the research interests of scholars. Middle Eastern countries themselves require maps for the purposes of administration and national development and thereby provide the main thrust for the production of maps by national and international agencies. Foreign states and companies having strategic or economic interests in the region, past or present, have also produced maps. The West’s long concern with the origins and evolution of its civilization has fostered efforts in historical cartography. Not the least have been the research interests of scholars, which have led to the drawing of maps to suit their sometimes peculiar needs.